Part 12: Fire, Earth, Water, Air and... Crystal?

Update 12: Fire, Earth, Water, Air and... Crystal?

We've finally more or less completely run out of mechanical and world aspects to comment on, so updates will probably be a bit less verbose from here till the end.



So, how was everyone's holiday?
I'd spent my six months learning the ins and outs of my new undead state, some things would definitely be taking some getting used to, like having a hollow skull that small animals could nest in while I slept.
I brooded darkly on top of a cliff in Shadowspire, meditating on my turn to the paths of darkness. And I got some reading done, it's surprising how hard it is to read a good book while adventuring.
You could hardly call it a holiday, everyone in Alvar was out for blood when it came to getting their sponsorship deals in before the last leg of the quest.
I hid out in Ravage Roaming because my mom kept asking when I'd bring home a nice dragon girl.




With the pleasantries exchanged, we took to the sky to look for the Unicorn King, hoping that whoever built the obelisks had had the same idea of "Midsummer's Day" as us.
It seems simple enough, we find some big unicorn herds, see which corrupt noble they're all bowing to and finish him off.




Aw, unicorns, aren't they magical?


Despite being enemies you'll probably only encounter near the end of the game(since they're a bit off the beaten paths in the Murmurwoods, I didn't meet a single one during the earlier visits), unicorns are pretty unspecial. They cause no conditions, they cast no spells and they have no troublesome resistances. They do have ranged attacks, though, so perhaps if they were mixed in with the basilisks in decent numbers, they might have made them not trivially destroyed by dragon strafing runs.




Pfft! I got glitter up my nose from that last one!
Absolutely wretched animals. All the glitter in their manes gets in their eyes and leaves them constantly grouchy.
I'll say, someone in the tour group always has to try and pet one. It never ends well.
I wondered how unicorns ever got their glamorous reputation. What I saw were a bunch of surly, horned horses that took pot shots at every sightseer who wandered into their part of the woods. Weren't they supposed to be legendarily good judges of character? Didn't they realize we were here to save the world?





There are two big packs of unicorns on the map, one in the northwest and one in the southeast. You'd think that if I took out the northwest one first, then obviously the unicorn king should be in the southeastern one, right? I mean, the clue said he'd be among his subjects, right?




Nope! I actually had to look up his spawn location online because I thought it was a bug or something that he wasn't spawning. Instead he spawns sort of in between the two packs, in an area that has no unicorns whatsoever.





Predictable that he'd hide out here and leave his subjects to distract us.
But we have the key now! I can't wait to see what's in the Vault of Time!
I echoed Infaustus, I was shaking dreaming of the fabulous souvenirs we'd unearth!





Put it in already! My publicist is just dying to put "Opener of the Vault of Time" inside the jacket of my autobiography.
Don't rush me! Keys aren't made for dragon claws!
Promising Ithilgore he could open the Vault was, I suppose, not our smartest move, but he's really hard to say no to when he does the big puppy dog eyes.



So the fabulous Vault of Time both is and isn't a wash. On the one hand, most of the contents are money, and at this point gold is such an irrelevance that I've just kind of been disdaining even picking it up or grabbing stuff that's exclusively for selling. Secondly, it also improbably generated a bottom-tier belt and set of gloves, like one of the WISE ANCIENTS accidentally forgot their laundry inside. It also produced some top-tier ore chunks, but I only engaged with that mechanic once in MM8 since the ore-crafter NPC's seem to produce gear that's pretty dogshit compared to what they could churn out in MM7 and, besides, it's easy enough to get stuff that's not bad without playing their gacha bullshit.

The actual score is that it vomited up three artifacts. But are they any good?



Not bad, definitely kinda sorta decent if you bring a minotaur. Better if it was two-handed, though, Volcano that we found last update is certainly better.



With the lack of offensive boosts, this is a mace for a Cleric rather than a Troll, but perversely, the Personality boost is kind of pointless for a Cleric, since by the end of this update, Leland's "Day of the Gods"-cast is producing something like a +200 boost to every stat for every party member. +40 Personality from the artifact mace isn't even enough to improve his Spell Point total. Of course, he still gets to carry it because it's about looking cool and this thing is pretty high on the scale of things that look neat.



Foulfang is probably the best score, but... it has the issue that the game has nothing that's called poison damage. It could be water damage, since most everything described as poison or acid has classically been a water spell. It could also be dark damage, since dark is evil and poison is evil. Assuming it's not broken and actually does something, it's a great dagger! Especially since vampires like daggers and anything that regains health on hit is real nice. This results in some Infaustus/Cauri weapon juggling, leaving them both with one sword and one dagger.



Breaking open the Vault of Time was exhilarating and left everyone full of energy. Leland and Infaustus had received new magical equipment, Cauri had received fame, I'd experienced something no one else had ever experienced for, or would ever since, and Ithilgore-
I got a glove!
-was Ithilgore. While the high lasted, I decided we should head to the Ravage Roaming and investigate the Plane of Water. It sounded like the least hostile, after all, what water does is mostly clean things, right?





So, Infaustus, did you learn anything about navigating the elemental planes in the last six months?
You betcha!





Arachne and I don't need to breathe, so we're good. As for the rest of you, I brought this.
...this appears to be several hundred plastic straws from a Ravenshore inn.
Exactly. You'll just put them together end to end and draw air from this side!



...
I can't believe your stupid plan is working.
If it's working, it ain't stupid.
Hm, what's with Arachne? She isn't narrating the majesty of the oceans or the monsters headed for us.
She can't, if she brings out her diary here, it'll be ruined by the water.





Oh, oh, can I do it?
This I have to see. Go for it.
Wow, book! There's water everywhere! And fishpeople! Unfortunately the fishpeople are mean! We're real lucky to see this!
Completely indistinguishable.


Okay, so, what happens when you enter the Plane of Water is that you're immediately surrounded by like twenty Water Elementals. This sucks and almost got me killed, thankfully the Plane of Water counts as "outdoors," thus allowing Ithilgore to take the party to the "air" and kite them. They can shoot, but being mobile helps dodge the worst of it.


Water Elementals are reasonably tough, supplemented by 30 points of resistance to just about everything, including physical and dark magic. Their basic shooting attacks can do up to 100 damage for the tier 3 elementals, and on top of that they can cast spells, too. The biggest spell is a 22 to 42 damage water spell... that produces seven projectiles. This gives it a really high damage potential if the party gets hammered by it head on. The only thing that keeps the party alive through this is Arachne bringing out Souldrinker, a Master Dark spell that hits all visible enemies for decent damage but, more importantly, refunds all damage done as hit points for the party. In these situations with a lot of visible enemies, it's a very good cast.




By the end of just clearing out the first fight in the zone, Arachne has almost completely tapped out her supply of spell points.




And this is immediately followed up by the second enemy type of the zone, a pack of Dragon Turtles.


They're a lot less dangerous than Water Elementals, they have about the same hit points, and potentially do more damage(and it's physical, too, so unreduced), but they have no ranged attacks and no spells, and they're in an area where the party can just fly and kite them. Unlike the Shoals in MM7, the Plane of Water in MM8 has no limitations. You can bust out fire magic, you can wear any equipment, it's all normalcy. The main issue is that the party is out of spell points at this point, so they take a lot of killing.





What a cozy little home! I wonder who'd live here.




Wow, what a letdown. Here I was expecting some local colour and instead all we get is a wet blanket.





The Plane of Water is intended as a sort-of maze, but... they let us fly, and there's nothing too tall for us to head over. Let's look at a map!



We start at 1, the first small house is at 2, and where we want to go is 3. Most of the other markers are just "empty houses," one other has a lore NPC that I sadly missed because I was too busy running from everything that wanted to kill the party.





The other type of house in the Plane of Water is this odd sort of thing that actually looks like a sunken ship or submersible(probably a ship, though, since it has a steering wheel on top, even though the shape implies something else.). It's kind of interesting, if you overthink it a bit. Does this imply that the Plane of Water is at the depths of a normal ocean? Are there portals there at the bottom of the ocean? Do water elementals for some reason build ships? Do planar explorers regularly drop by in their underwater vessels? It's interesting to me, anyway.



As someone already guessed, this one hosts the Grandmaster Water trainer. That's right, the Grandmaster elemental trainers are all in the elemental planes, which is some rough shit. With some good juking and jiving, you could probably reach the Air and Water trainers early without needing to fight the locals much, but as for Earth and Fire... oof. Mind, Water's the only one that's really worth going for.

Anyone who can learn GM Elemental spells can also learn GM Light and Dark. GM Fire just means big fire damage, Dark is better for that. GM Air means big Air damage outside, Dark is better for that. GM Earth means Mass Distortion, which is good for single large tough targets... which don't really exist in MM8. Even dragons tend to show up in packs, there's no Mega Dragon. GM Water, on the other hand, has long-time favourite Lloyd's Beacon which is generally what you need to snap the game in half since you can pop out of dungeons midway to go have snacks and take a nap.




After navigating the canyons of the Plane of Water for a while, the party eventually comes upon this, an odd structure completely mobbed by monsters. I wonder if it's special?

They wouldn't be guarding it so furiously if it wasn't special! Onwards!
I hope it's the thing, I'm all out of straws!




It is, obviously, the Heartstone of Water, so this is where everyone yells at Arachne to Town Portal the party out before they die.




Bringing a Heartstone out of its plane also provides a fat lump of XP, enough for three or four levels for each character, even at this late stage of the game. This means that close to 1/5th to 1/6th of all the levels you're likely to gain in the game drop from these late quests, which feels a bit awkward.





This brings us to the Plane of Earth. It feels a bit out of place that the portal to the Plane of Earth is on the slopes of a risen volcano, which I associate more with Fire. It feels like it would make more sense for it to be at the bottom of some deep rift into the ground.




At least we won't need any hare-brained schemes to survive here.



Dear diary, sorry about the soggy edges! And sorry about not updating you! I couldn't exactly bring you out of the bag for any updates in the Plane of Water without ruining you, but here are are on the Plane of Earth. Nothing but dark, winding tunnels as far as the eye can see, filled with dirt, rocks, boulders-
Ahhh! Boulders!



It's not quite the welcome swarm of the Plane of Water, and the Plane of Earth is treated as an interior zone, but it's still somewhat the same philosophy of "fuck you for showing up." Also, let's have a look at the map of this place ahead of time.



Yeah, that's right. Multiple layers of intertwining tunnels where the grid map will completely trail over itself and make it impossible to figure out where the hell you are or where you're going.





Aside from Boulders, which do nasty Rock Blasts but thankfully aren't mobile, there are also Chargers which are laughable in terms of difficulty at this point.




What's worse are the actual Earth Elementals.


The base stats are the same as Water Elementals, but with physical melee attacks instead of ranged water attacks as their basic attack. Normally this would make them less dangerous, but they're much harder to kite in the tunnels, especially in some later sections. Secondly, their spellcasting is much nastier. Rock Blast is somewhat harder to dodge since it bounces off surfaces(nasty in the tunnels), and the tier 3 elementals cast Mass Distortion which is a lot scarier for the party than it is for the NPC's. They cast it at a high enough level to shave 45% of current HP off the character that's hit.




The final HP values after that little encounter are after Arachne casts Souldrinker about three times. The damage output from Earth Elementals is pretty grim.




These particular houses are empty, but there are some populated ones later on, including the GM Earth trainer.




These elementals are much more like what I was expecting out of the Plane of Water, they're real-
Do not.
Salt of the Earth types!




Aside from them, though, most of the tunnels are just tunnels full of enemies. There aren't even any chests or ores or the like to recover. Instead, the only thing that's of any great interest is the area at the north of the Plane of Earth.




Our goal is the artificial structure embedded in the more natural rock, a sort of castle facade with a single descending elevator.





The welcome committee is not nice, the first time around it just killed everyone, forcing a reload, the second time around, I only pulled through because Leland sacrificed ten years of his lifespan to Divine Intervention the party when things looked grimmest.

I thought Leland was about to soil himself.
Darn whippersnapper, back in my day we had to walk to a temple uphill, both ways, while dodging wyverns, to get to a temple, if we wanted to get healed!
Knock it off, Leland, you're still in your 40's.



It still ends up being pretty close for Cauri by the end, even having pulled out all of the stops to save the party.




The stairs up to the second level make the same mistake as the Ogre Raiding Fort way back, where sufficient patience will allow you to draw any number of idiot enemies unto this perch and blow them up. Thankfully we're over the worst, and the remaining enemies can be easily handled in more "fair" fights.






There isn't a lot to say about the "castle" interior. Just tons and tons of earth elementals whose ability to fuck you is completely down to RNG, whether they toss a normal attack or hit the 30% RNG that triggers a Mass Distortion or Rock Blast.





We'd survived acquiring two of the four elemental heartstones, which was a good sign, but I still felt a note of worry. I'd always felt that water and earth were safe elements, staying where they were put, never really surprising you. But fire? Nothing but destruction. Air? Hard to think of anything but storms.





So! There's an interesting point about the Ironsands portal to the Plane of Fire. Since it's located in the middle of a lake of magma you could just fly there on a dragon(you did bring a dragon, didn't you?) and I think the Vampire's "float" spell should also do it. But they left in a passage that it's entirely in your interest to explore even if you don't need it.





It's a short tunnel with a single side passage, populated by a low number of gogs(child's play to wipe out at this point), which terminates at the archipelago of islands that the portal is on. The side passage, though, is what interests us.





And yes, that's the entire floor ahead glowing because Perception is detecting a trap around that chest. It'd be a great point to know Telekinesis.



It's guarded by a few new enemies, fire plane natives called Salamanders.


Despite being more fragile than the various elementals, they have a pretty powerful offensive loadout, enough to allow them to still put dents in even a party with 200+ Fire Resistance across the board. Aside from their surprising offensive power, they're kind of unimportant. What's important is this trap ahead.




Because like the Rock Blast trap back in the Dark Dwarf quarters, it's the sort of trap with no reset time. Every single tick you're moving while in its activation area, it'll pound you with four fireballs, and they don't just shoot forwards, they track the party's location. I completely underestimated how much it would kick my ass and almost got the entire party killed. So is it worth it just for this one chest?





The armor is absolutely the best chainmail you're ever likely to find for a Dark Elf. High AC, boosts resistances notably, boosts stats notably. The staff, meanwhile, is largely just okay, but the Of Shielding property means that all non-spell ranged attacks do halved damage to the wielder by default, so it helps make Arachne a lot more survivable. Since she can't get diseased or poisoned(and Protection From Magic negates all conditions anyway...), the resistances are a bit irrelevant, but would, I suppose, be nice if not on a Lich.






And then just one more gog is in the way before you're out in the middle of the lake where the portal is guarded by a small pack of, again, gogs. It's a long time since they were even a vague threat to the party.





Anyone care to guess what awaits us on the other side?




Dear diary, I'm sorry to risk your precious pages in such a high-combustion environment, but this really is absurd! Why would all these elementals be loitering around the portal just waiting for us?


Fire Elementals are reasonably scary because like water elementals they both fly and have ranged attacks that do a lot of damage, unlike Water Elementals, however, their high-damage Tier 3 spells are projectile-less and thus always hit you. Additionally, the Tier 2 elementals can cast Haste, which can suddenly up the threat factor notably if they roll that when cycling through their scripts.




The exterior of the Plane of Fire is like an inverted Plane of Earth, where you walk on top of the ridges instead of between them, since the space between them is full of lava. Sadly, Flight doesn't trivialize it since most of the ridgetops are above the maximum height ceiling for Flight. So you have to actually stop and bop some of the locals.







It feels like they missed something potentially interesting with the angle of the elementals being unwilling to fight against the non-elementals, but being magically compelled to do so anyway. Perhaps designing some of the elemental dungeons so clever use of Invisibility, Telekinesis, etc. could let you bypass them with a minimum of violence, even if it didn't have any gameplay effect. Because as it is, we're basically chopping our way through armies of slaves and hostages, other victims, rather than anyone actually responsible and choosing to join in the carnage.



In any case, the Castle of Fire is the ultimate goal of the Plane of Fire.



Also, salamanders show up in the Plane of Fire, too, but tend to disappear because the zig-zag movement means they always yeet themselves off the sides of the narrow ridges since the edges aren't technically "drops" but instead just near vertical sides. This oversight is kind of funny.




Sometimes you can really tell what they were going for but what the fidelity of the engine at the time just could not handle. It makes me wish these games were made... like a decade later, perhaps by Larian instead of NWC.




The entrance is a bit odd since you arrive staring at a metal pillar too wide to fit in one screen, with a fire elemental flitting around one side and a door on the other side.





Followed by perilous platforming over lava, which absolutely does not give a fuck about how much fire resistance you have. It will melt the party from full health in roughly ten seconds if they drop in.




Of course, I fat-finger the controls and drop the party into the soup.

I bet that made you hot under the collar.

And the only way out is to either run all the way back to the start or the end, and of course there are fire elementals along the way blocking your progress, so you have to either find a way to dodge them or bonk them, and the platforms are too high up to be reached by casting Jump(which is a bit of a shame).





Reaching the apparent end of the Castle of Fire, we hit a dead end(albeit one filled with treasure), where were we meant to go from here? Seen from the outside there was obviously much more to the fortress than what we'd seen...




What you're meant to do is to hop on this pillar, which makes it sink, functioning like a button pressed. It's a bit odd as it's neither marked by Perception, nor happens anywhere else in the game. You might try it just because the pillar stands out, but players might well also not! Now if you loop back to the start...



The pillar has become a platform! Which is actually an elevator.




Which takes you up only to provide a five-foot corridor to an elevator that takes you down. They could've just made it a door!




It leads to progression and a small treasure room containing...





Containing great boots, an acceptable belt and an "eh" ring(no one's casting water spells or using alchemy, let's get real). What annoys me is that two of these are using default sprites. You could easily just ignore these! I've almost certainly missed at least one artifact in a chest in the past just because it had a default low-level sprite.






A big room full of fire elementals and... no apparent way onwards. Just a button! After pressing this, it took me a few minutes to figure out exactly what it did. See...




All it does is add "steps" to this lava waterfall, indicating that you can now walk through it. This is super-unobvious.





This spinning tunnel of (non-harmful!) lava is kind of neat, as it leads you down to the Heart of Fire. We're not quite done with the Plane of Fire even with this, though, as it actually has a second dungeon! Not much of one, but it exists!





The War Camp is an odd little mini-challenge dungeon, containing a single enemy type which is, as far as I'm aware, not seen anywhere else.


They're just weaker Fire Elementals that can't shoot, really. They don't cause any conditions(in general MM8 has relatively few enemies that do) or cast any spells.




Once you enter the room, the walls start folding down, revealing gogs and efreets. Absolutely nothing scary.




The last slot to open up has a teleporting floor tile that sends you up above the arena, into an area littered with some super generic gear and two items that aren't generic at all.




Aside from that terribly proportioned hat, Arachne is now stylin'.



There's also this forgettable sword. Being both a two-hander and tagged as Slow means a lot of lost damage output compared to just wielding two one-handed swords, or a sword and a dagger or something. That's the last Plane of Fire content, though, that means it's time to head off to the Plane of Air.




This portal's off in the Murmurwoods.





Well, the Plane of Air, I can't imagine this being worse than any of the others.
Storms, clouds, tornadoes, lightning...
Yes, thank you, I'd still rather face those than magma or being only one misaligned plastic straw from drowning.




I really can't believe they fucked up the Plane of Air so badly. It looks like something out of Clouds of Xeen, right? A risk of misstepping and dropping back to Jadame or something? Ha ha, no. It's literally just a normal overworld area but with a transparent ground texture. Those floating globes are just to indicate where the "roads" are, but you can walk off them with no problems. There are even invisible elevation differences!






And most of the Air houses are just basically floating bricks, with, like, one showing what they could do.






See this? That weird huge goofy-ass propeller piece of architecture at least looks kind of interesting. So what else is there to see outside? Compared to the other planes, there's less density of elementals, and no huge pack of 20-something waiting to ambush the party immediately on entry.




Almost half the map is populated by nothing but these weird Ravenman Nests, which have entry doors but never any contents, and which are, predictably, patrolled by ravenmen and giant birds.


Thunderbirds are just brown Phoenixes with ranged spell attacks, and similarly uninteresting, and Ravenmen are even less interesting. They're pretty much just flying bandits, they flap at you, hack at you, get hacked in return, they don't even steal your gold or anything.




So really, just skip all that and head straight to this castle at the center of the Plane of Air. You can pretty much see it from where you arrive and it's guarded by roughly two air elementals on the outside.




Anyway, what about these air elementals? Water and Earth kicked my ass some, but Fire didn't. Is Air in the league of badasses?


I mean, on paper they should be! With their third-tiers able to cast Implosion(one of the nastiest single-target offensive spells in the game and, once again, having no projectile to dodge), they should be able to lay down a lot of pain on the party, but they're consistently present in smaller numbers than on any of the other planes, making them relatively trivial to deal with.

You could say it was... a breeze!





The first floor of the castle is just a few guards and an ornamental fountain, followed by... stairs. Stairs for the elementals that are defined by being able to fly. This should've been a hellhole of jump pads and teleporters for the occasional groundbound visitor, not something easily navigable by creatures with legs.





Even their bedrooms look like plain, normal bedrooms which, once again, seems a bit out of place for use by what's basically a sentient tornado.



There's also a throne room which inexplicably lacks a throne, makes the place feel a bit unfinished.



Exploring the castle we found in the Plane of Air, we stumbled across a kitchen. It was oddly out of place, strangely prosaic, and yet it made a chill run down my spine. Something evil was afoot!

Oh no! Cover your ears!
HEY GUYS. ITS A KITCHEN. IN THE PLANE OF AIR.
I don't get it, what's going on?
NOW WE CAN FINALLY FIND OUT WHAT'S UP WITH. AIR. PLANE. FOOD.



Oh! I think I got this joke! That's funny!

Once the party recovers from being Eradicated, they move on to the last room in the castle.




Just another normal bedroom, right?



Except, of course, that the hidden door behind the wardrobe conceals the final elemental Heartstone in a super weird place. All of the other ones were behind traps and heavy guard, this one is just loitering in a hidden broom closet. Time to fetch our parachutes and jump out of the Air Plane.






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyCbSal7SM





And so, we progress into the part of the game I have zero memories of, except for the final cutscene, which is the only reason I know I must have beaten it at some point in the past. We'll probably finish this thing off in one more update, so feel free to place your bets about what exciting revelations and challenges we'll encounter in the final stretch.

Hype as I was to get this started, I'm really starting to look forward to finishing off this LP since the last parts are so comparatively weakly done.